Music and Power in the Soviet 1930s: A History of Composers’ Bureaucracy

Author:

Mikkonen, Simo

Year:

2009

Pages:

228

ISBN:

0-7734-4835-7978-0-7734-4835-3

Price:

179.95

The existing literature on music in Soviet society primarily discusses specific works or composers rather than the context within which music was produced. This book examines the relationship of art and politics in the Soviet Union during the early Stalinist phase, 1930s, leaning on extensive archival work.

Reviews

“It is thanks to archival research such as Mikkonen’s that we are at last able to fill in some of those gaps in our knowledge through the micro-narratives of musical discourse and Union bureaucracy, and so better understand the culture which produced some of the greatest and most popular music of the last century.”
– Prof. Pauline Fairclough, University of Bristol

“. . . Mikkonen’s book belongs to the revisionist camp and his conclusions work against the totalitarian model of interpretation. While the controversy between the totalitarian approach and the revisionists seems to remain unsettled for the foreseeable future, Mikkonen has some serious arguments for his stance and his book deserves to be taken into account by all serious scholars of these questions.” – Prof. Timo Vihavainen, Renvall Institute University of Helsinki

“The conclusions of this [work] will disappoint those who require a simplistic, ‘black and white’ interpretation of Soviet cultural history – the word ‘complexity’ probably appearing more than any other – placing the author at the forefront of revisionist thinking about this highly contested period of Soviet history.” – Prof. Neil Edmunds, University of the West of England